Techmeme
March 20, 2023, 8:45 PM

Top News

Annie Palmer / CNBC:
Andy Jassy says Amazon plans to lay off an additional 9,000 employees, mostly in AWS, PXT, Advertising, and Twitch, after cutting 18,000+ jobs in January 2023  —  - Amazon will lay off 9,000 more employees in the coming weeks, CEO Andy Jassy said in a memo to staff on Monday.
Tim Bradshaw / Financial Times:
Microsoft plans to launch an app store for Android and iOS games as soon as 2024 if regulators clear its $75B Activision bid and the EU's DMA rules take effect  —  Xbox boss Phil Spencer says store could launch as soon as next year if regulators clear Activision Blizzard deal
Rachel Metz / Bloomberg:
Runway, which helped make Stable Diffusion, unveils its Gen 2 system for creating three-second video snippets from text-based prompts, available via a waitlist  —  Artificial intelligence has made remarkable progress with still images.  For months, services like Dall-E and Stable Diffusion …
ABC News:
An interview with Sam Altman on how “people should be happy” OpenAI is a “little bit scared of” its tools, GPT-4's rollout, large-scale disinformation, and more  —  “This will be the greatest technology humanity has yet developed,” he said.  —  OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks with ABC News, Mar. 15, 2023.
Manya Saini / Reuters:
The FDIC plans to break up SVB and hold an auction for its traditional deposits unit and another for its private bank, after failing to find a buyer last week  —  The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation on Monday decided to break up Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and hold two separate auctions …
Pete Schroeder / Reuters:
The FDIC plans to sell all of Signature Bank's 40 branches to Flagstar Bank, as well as some Signature loans and deposits not in its digital banking business  —  A subsidiary of New York Community Bancorp (NYCB.N) has entered into an agreement with U.S. regulators to purchase deposits and loans …
Aisha Malik / TechCrunch:
Netflix plans to launch 40 games in 2023 and has a further 70 in development with its partners, after releasing 55 titles since adding games in November 2021  —  Netflix has announced that it has 40 games slated for launch this year and has 70 in development with its partners.
Ashley Capoot / CNBC:
Microsoft speech recognition subsidiary Nuance debuts Dragon Ambient eXperience Express, which uses GPT-4 to generate clinical note drafts after patient visits  —  - Microsoft and its Nuance Communications subsidiary announced Dragon Ambient eXperience (DAX) Express, a clinical notes application …
Matina Stevis-Gridneff / New York Times:
Sources: in 2021, the phone of a US and Greek national who worked on Meta's security and trust team was infected with Predator spyware from an Athens-based firm  —  Artemis Seaford, a dual U.S.-Greek national, was targeted with a cyberespionage tool while also under a wiretap by the Greek spy agency …
Washington Post:
CASM Technology and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue report: the average weekly number of antisemitic tweets more than doubled after Elon Musk's acquisition  —  Happy Monday!  If you thought it was a busy news cycle last week, buckle up.  Send tips to: cristiano.lima@washpost.com.
Michael Kan / PCMag:
Study: GPT models and related technologies could seriously affect ~19% of workers in the US, with higher-income jobs potentially facing greater exposure  —  Researchers examine how OpenAI's GPT technology could affect the workforce, and find 'the influence spans all wage levels …
More: VICE

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Abner Li / 9to5Google: